Tuesday, December 15, 2009

The latest PP undercover video catches a "counselor" in some spectacular lies

Planned Parenthood caught in the act again by undercover videographers.

First, familiarize yourself with what these people at Planned Parenthood are talking about. Go to a neutral source. I'll provide what The Visible Embryo has to say. I have italicized some facts for emphasis:

Head and NeckBasic brain structure of the fetus is complete and now the brain mass rapidly increases. Sockets for all twenty teeth are formed in the gum lines. Face has human appearance - one example is the nasolacrimal grooveforming on the upper lip. Separate folds of the mouth fuse together forming the palate. Early facial hair follicles begin to develop.

ThoraxVocal cords form in larynx and fetus can make sounds.

AbdomenIntestines have migrated into abdomen from the umbilical cord. Digestive tract muscles are functional and practice contraction. Nutrient-extracting villi line the now folded intestines. The liver starts to secrete bile, a thick, brown-green liquid containing bile salts, bile pigments, cholesterol and inorganic salts. The bile is stored in the gall bladder. Development of thyroid and pancreas are complete. Pancreas starts to produce insulin.

Now that you have a clear picture of what is being discussed, listen to what the supposedly neutral, fact-based "counseling" at Planned Parenthood tells the patient:

Let's analyze what these "experts" are telling the patient.

The PP "counselor" indicates that the "pregnancy" -- which would include the placenta and amniotic sac -- is "about as wide as my fingernail." According to The Visible Embryo, a 10 week fetus (which is a fetus that is actually 8 weeks old, since gestational age is counted from the woman's last period and thus includes two weeks prior to conception) is about 1.5 inches long. And that's not including the amniotic sac and placenta -- the entire pregnancy. How big are these women's hands, that she could accurately describe a fetus that's an inch and a half long as "as wide as my fingernail"?

The patient asks if her fetus has a heart beat. The PP "counselor" ignores reality. Again, let's turn to The Visible Embryo, where we're told that at about 8 weeks gestation (6 weeks post conception), "The critical period of heart development ends." We're dealing here with a formed and functioning heart that will mature, but is structurally complete. The four chambers of the heart were formed at six weeks gestation (4 weeks after conception). The heart valves have been forming since 25 days gestational age. The heart has been pulsating for several days now. A 10 week fetus has a functioning, beating heart. What this "counselor" means by "heart tones" is a mystery. And to claim that there's no heart beat isn't present until 17 or 18 weeks is a bald faced lie. As is her claim that the fetus doesn't become "active in the uterus" until 17 or 18 weeks. Shall we check what Boston University has to say about Fetal Activity:

The first spontaneous FM has been found to occur between 7 and 8.5 weeks gestation, providing concrete evidence that FM emerges not at quickening, or the time at which the mother first feels FM, but much earlier in gestation. These early movements also show that the behavioral repertoire of the fetus is not solely reflexive in nature because these observed movements (e.g., yawning, stretching, limb movements, etc.) are spontaneous and not elicited. In addition, very early fetal movements are not random, but show systematic organization in that distinct types of movements are regularly observed. This organization of behavior implies that these fetal movements are a directly observable manifestation of central nervous system development.

This site for expectant mothers notes that at 9 weeks the fetus is actively swimming around in the uterus -- fully 8 weeks before this Planned Parenthood "counselor" tells the patient that a fetus "becomes active in the uterus".

The "counselor" then goes on to talk about the ability to survive outside the womb -- which is not what the patient asked. She didn't ask if her baby could survive if it were born at that moment. She asked if her baby's heart was beating. The "counselor" tries to deflect the patient's interest from what matters to her -- Is the heart beating? -- to what she hopes will convince the patient that the unborn entity is too unsophisticated to be worth her concern.

The patient asks for a consult with the doctor. He tries to push for the exam first -- to overcome the inertia that has this patient balking, to get her past her questions. The further you are along in a process, the less willing you are to put on the brakes. And this guy is trying to keep this patient from thinking about what she's about to undergo. If they were interested in giving this patient the information she needed to make her choice before proceeding with the abortion, why would they push for going straight into the exam? After all, if she opts not to abort, the exam isn't necessary. She'd be referred for prenatal care.

Then, he launches into this:

"It's not a baby at this stage, or anything like that."

Well, we can debate the "baby" part, I suppose. If it's wanted, we refer to it as a baby all the time. Nobody asks a happily pregnant woman if she's heard the "fetal heart tones". No happily pregnant woman shows off ultrasounds and says, "I got a picture of my fetus!" But I'm not debating the semantics of using the word "baby" to describe the entity in the womb of a woman who isn't delighted to be pregnant. I want to focus on the "or anything like that." You'd have to be a bit clueless to even try to argue that what's in the womb at 10 weeks (the stage of pregnancy being discussed" is not anything like a baby. It's clearly very much like a baby. It looks very much like a baby. It behaves very much like a baby. Show a five-year-old a picture of a 10-week fetus and he'll say "Baby!" So what this PP doctor was talking about was something that was, if not technically a baby, was nevertheless enough like a baby that it's a deliberate lie. It's an attempt to get her past her uneasiness with destroying the fetus in question.

Notice also that the "counselor" told the patient that the fetus isn't a "baby" until birth. The doctor is telling her it's a "baby" at 6 or 7 months. Hm. Could it be that there's some fuzziness in the concept of "baby" behind the doors of Planned Parenthood?

You can see how clearly he's trying to talk her into aborting right away rather than to take more time to think about it. He seems especially eager to have her abort before their facility's 13-week cut-off!

We'll give him a pass on the spurious claim that abortion at 10 weeks is "safer than having a baby" -- that claim has so much credence in abortion advocacy circles that you can't blame him for lying. He's passing along a lie he's been taught. The truth is that we don't have enough evidence to make comparisons of the safety of aborting a baby versus giving birth to it. Then he tries to go into scaring her. "Women die having babies!" He assures her none of his abortion patients have died.

What we're seeing in this video is two professional abortion salespeople pushing a customer to buy their product despite very clear evidence that she's uncertain that this is what she wants.

5 comments:

"Heart tones" is a common term when the woman is in labor -- "fetal heart tones" is interchangeable with "fetal heart rate"! Which happens much before 17-18 weeks, as you pointed out. Often, women can hear their baby's heart beat during an early ultrasound or during any prenatal checkup, with Doppler u/s.

But it surprised me that the PP person said that the baby could survive at 17-18 weeks! Usually they downplay early fetal survivability, claiming that babies born as late as 21-23 weeks rarely or never survive, or that all have severe disabilities (which is partly but not always true).

Technically, she's right that a fetus becomes a baby at birth, as far as definitions go... and an infant stops being an infant on his first birthday -- but it's still a baby, a child, a human. She is dehumanizing the baby, but technically accurate. Still, it's sort of like saying of a grandmother, "She's a *senior citizen* not a *person*" -- just not right!

An embryo and a fetus are not supposedly interchangeable terms -- the baby is called an embryo up to about 8 weeks, and is a fetus from that point until birth. Then it's a neonate until 28 days, then an infant until 1 year, then a toddler, pre-K, kindergartner, etc. But it's all the same entity. It's still murder.

OC, I've said it before and I'll say it again -- the overwhelming majority of C-sections done in this country and probably most other countries are NOT done to save the life or health of the mother, but are done to save the life or health of the baby. Back in the 70s, when maternal mortality was at its lowest rate in the US (single digits), the C-section rate was 5%. The MMR is now double that, with the C-section rate at 30% and climbing.

Your previous statement was, "Childbirth requires major surgery with a frequency somewhere between one in four (USA) and one in ten (third world). "

This is factually incorrect. Just because the rate of surgery is that high (or low) does not mean that it "requires" it. C-sections are overused. And they rarely save the life of the mother. Most frequently they are used because of fear of the child being harmed or killed (typically due to overuse of interventions such as inductions and augmentations that adversely affect the fetal heart-rate and its ability to handle the contractions).

Besides, your statement in context implies that a C-section is required to save the life of the mother. No. A C-section is rarely required to save the life of the mother. Sure, when a C-section is performed, it is major surgery and increases mortality -- which is a reason for you to support ICAN and other such groups. But the C-section rate can safely be decreased in the US without raising maternal or perinatal mortality or morbidity. C-sections are not "required". The full-term fetus could be dismembered, to allow it to be removed from the uterus, without a C-section. But most women would find that abhorrent.

Far better for you to throw your energy into supporting safe motherhood practices like lowering the rate of interventions, than in trying to increase the abortion rate.

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